Course Outline: This course covers the basics of property law. We will examine what makes property rights distinctive; how property rights are created, transferred, and destroyed; and what the powers and duties of property owners are. This course will serve as a foundation for a variety of upper-division courses, including land use, environmental law, intellectual property, and commercial law.

First Day Assignments: (Jan. 21) Acquisition by Discovery. pp. 1–18 (skim notes)In Johnson v. M’Intosh , we will look at who holds title the land when there are competing interests.This case gives us perspective on the roots of our current property rights, raises some of the underlying principles animating property law, and allows us to see how the law itself is not based on absolutes.
Focus Questions: (1) What is title? (2) Why is the
Supreme Court concerned with the limits of its power? (3) What is Locke’s Labor Theory? (4) What is the principle of “first in time, first in right”?
(5) How does this case illustrate that property is
more a “bundle of rights” than one single right?